


Mono

by zigostia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, M/M, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-07 22:19:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17969102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zigostia/pseuds/zigostia
Summary: It wasn’t real, he told himself. He had to remember that it wasn’t real, or it would hurt too much in the morning.





	Mono

It was raining. Obviously, it was raining.

It had been a bright, sunny day—the most of a bright, sunny day London could be—when Sherlock fell.

It must have been a fluke, some out-of-the-blue occasion, because, in the eyes of John Watson, London had never been bright or sunny again. Not the day after, not the one after that. Not on the funeral that he didn’t attend, not on the day he abruptly packed up all his things and moved out of the flat because he couldn’t stand the deafening silence, and not on the day he moved back in after three days because he couldn’t stand it without.

Especially not after one year. Especially not today.

It had been like this all day, the foreboding signs of a storm gently brewing at the horizons. The sky was dully grey and devoid of colour, like everything else was these days.

It was the angry, sharp ash of gunpowder when he stumbled his way headfirst into a pub. The silence seemed louder, today, so thick he felt it in the cracks of his teeth and the curl of his tongue. Bitter, acrid; it tasted like pain, and he knocked his head back and kept his eyes shut until it dissolved in the burn of whiskey down his throat. When he opened his eyes and studied the liquid, it was strange: the warm amber of whiskey was familiar in his memories, but it was all gone, now, like the colour had seeped away bit by bit, a washed-out sepia photo in the sun.

It was dark when he stumbled out, a starless sky. The low roll of thunder rumbled in the backdrop, and the rain pricked like needles on his face. He stopped at a traffic light; looked up at the row of three. Grey, grey, grey.

He didn’t remember walking after that, only that, when he came to, he was on his knees. His hands were gripping cold, rough stone, wet from the rain, gripping desperately like it was a lifeline. The irony was fleeting as he came slowly to awareness and was greeted by the epitaph that marked the place Sherlock Holmes now lay.

He closed his eyes and saw a bright, sunny day. He pulled his head into his arms, and heard the last two words he’d ever hear Sherlock speak a low murmur in his ears, heard the scream tear and claw its way from his throat. The rain was rising over his head, the air sticky and stinging.

And then there was something.

Something—something. It touched his arm, his shoulder. It made a small sound, something that could’ve been his name. It encircled John from behind.

Arms. Long and lanky, lean muscle and sinew; flesh and bone. That sound again.

“John,” it said into his ear. “Oh, John.”

John would recognize that voice anywhere; would hear it through a thunderstorm, a tsunami, from the other side of the world, from Hell.

He turned his head towards the source of the sound. He opened his eyes and saw blue.

Too much whiskey, he thought faintly, and laughed, low and bitter. “Well, this is a serious knockback in my recovery process.”

The arms tightened briefly, then loosened. John felt the fear flash through him when they began to pull away like a hot knife through his heart, and gritted his teeth. Less than one minute, and all his walls came crashing down. He suspected they weren’t really there to begin with―a card tower of defence in the face of a hurricane, just another lie.

He twisted his head around. The ghost had arranged himself until he was sitting cross-legged on the muddy ground. John’s eyes were playing tricks on him: the rain seemed to pound down and around the figure sitting on the floor, forming a rippling shield. Where it poured down in buckets and torrents, a furious maelstrom of ethereal rage, it fell in a halo around his head.

It could’ve crawled out of the ground beneath them, it looked so much like him. He had to give his own memory some credit. He’d remembered everything perfectly. John took in every inch, eyes greedy after a year. 

“You should go home,” the ghost said quietly. “It’s raining. You’ll catch a cold.”

“I don’t give a fuck,” John said automatically.

Those blue-steel eyes sharpened into a blade and embedded itself into John’s chest, where it pierced cleanly through. “Don’t say that.”

“You can’t stop me,” John said. “You’re dead,” he added, hating the way his voice wavered, the pain in his chest a wound as fresh as the day it was torn. He waited for it to respond; he needed a confirmation, yearned for a contradiction, and received neither.

“John.” So he had to come to his own conclusions, and the one he came to was that none of this was real, because those eyes were wide and plaintive and filled with concern and worry and something that looked alarmingly like they  _ cared— _ which was ridiculous, because if he cared, he wouldn’t have stepped off a fucking building and killed himself and a part of John with him, too.

The ghost pressed his lips together and enunciated his words carefully. “Are you OK?”

John grimaced and turned it into a twisted smile. “Oh, I’m fantastic.”

There was silence, then determination. The ghost stood up. John felt the back of his head hitting the gravestone as he watched him walk closer.

Arms came around him again, this time prompting, coaxing, tugging him skywards. “Come on, you have to get back home.”

“Well, isn’t this great,” John said. “Thank god for corporeal ghosts, huh?”

The ghost gritted his teeth and dragged John to his feet. John blinked at the sight of their hands together, the world swaying. The blood rushed from his head to his feet and the pounding headache spiked against his skull and the last thing he was aware of was a surprised shout and a sudden tightening of arms around him before his vision went black.

When he came to a stabbing, too-sharp awareness, he was sitting on the foot of his bed. He wasn’t wearing his coat, and Sherlock was tugging off his shoes.

“I hadn’t imagined the first time you take me to bed for you to be dead,” he mumbled, trying for brevity and missing by a mile.

Sherlock gritted his teeth and tossed John’s shoes haphazardly against the wall. “Stop it, John.”

“You’re no fun,” John said. “Christ, why do you care? You’re already dead. If I don’t say it now, when will I ever?” He struggled to push himself up, but his arms had gone limp.

“John,” Sherlock said warningly, hands fluttering as they pressed John back down into the bed. “Quiet.”

“You’re bossy for a ghost,” John muttered, but gave up his struggle when Sherlock draped a heavy blanket over him and pulled it up to his shoulders. He wasn’t sure how it was possible a hallucination was able to do any of the things this one could. There would be questions when he was sober. Granted, if he remembered any of this. Which was unlikely.

He sighed and turned his head to the side, nuzzling into his pillow. “I’m so fucking drunk,” he muttered.

The bed dipped as another weight settled on the side of the bed. A hand brushed the hair from his forehead, ran light, spidery-thin fingers through his hair. A flutter of a warm sigh tickled his forehead. “I’ll leave a glass of water and some aspirin for you in the morning by the bedside,” the response came softly. The bed moved again as Sherlock made his way to stand.

Panic lodged into John’s chest like a dagger. A sudden burst of strength made him reach his arm out and grab Sherlock’s wrist. “Don’t go.”

There was a pause. “I have to,” Sherlock said.

“No,” John insisted, opening his eyes. Sherlock was resisting his pull, standing and leaning towards the door. “Stay.”

“I can’t,” Sherlock said. He looked pained. “John, you know I can’t.”

“I’m not prepositioning you or anything. Sherlock,” John said. “Just stay with me. Please. We don’t even have to—to touch.” His chest wound up tighter and tighter like a coiled spring, desperation curling around his tongue, getting thicker by the word. “Please, Sherlock.”

“John,” Sherlock said, and it sounded like he was the one begging instead of John.

“Please,” John said, the word coming out in a harsh breath, ripping a wound in his chest.

Sherlock pursed his lips, his expression flickering.

John felt relief so wide it flooded his lungs, threatened to drown him whole, as Sherlock (carefully, slowly, like a surgical procedure) lifted the covers and slid into bed next to him.

He felt something click into place inside of him. That steady, constant ache in the hollow of his chest cavity stuttered, and then flickered away.

He had never known such pure, undiluted warmth. It melted the lingering traces of the outdoor frost, the ice in the cracks of his heart, from the inside out. The heat rolled off of him in waves, bathing John in a heavy clasp of comfort. John felt the tension in his shoulders, that he hadn’t even realized was there, gradually drop off and seep away with every exhale.

Sherlock was a gentle presence next to him—he never seemed so, never looked it, from an outsider glance; his sharp angles and knife-edged smile giving off the glint of danger that John had been so helpless to. But, now, the shadows bathed his silhouette in soft dancing shadows, lazily drifting through the air. John wondered how it was possible to miss something that he never actually had, and so badly that it hurt.

John felt the urge pulling at him like a puppet on strings—he couldn’t stop himself—his hand reached out and brushed Sherlock’s chest. He hadn’t even taken off his coat. The fabric was damp and smelled of rain.

“I hate this,” John said, his voice feather-tip fragile. “I hate that I can only have you like this, when it’s too late.” The words cascaded out, tumbling head over heels. “I hate that I was too much of a coward to tell you before it wasn’t. I hate that I—that I—”

“Don’t,” Sherlock interrupted, something urgent in his voice. “Don’t say it, John, not now.”

John felt the desperation creep into his words. “If not now, then when?”

“Not when you’re drunk,” Sherlock said. “Not when you—not like this. I won’t. I won’t take advantage.”

John felt something in those words strike through the muddy haze of alcohol in his mind. He was silent for almost a full minute while he turned that thought over.

“Oh, Christ,” he said faintly. “Don’t say—you too?”

There was no response.

“Fuck,” John said, and laughed hysterically. “This is just fucking perfect.”

He couldn’t stop laughing, cut-off giggles and delirious hiccups. It was just so fucking funny, so fucking  _ sad— _ a desperate little noise bloomed in his throat and squirmed its way out. The laughs turned to rapid, quiet, choked-off gasps. When he realized and tried to strangle them down, it was too late.

“Oh, John,” Sherlock said, and John felt an arm reach around him and pull him in.

John tried, he really tried. He screamed at himself to resist, to refuse— _ No, you can’t, you’re not real— _ but it hurt so badly, a visceral, gutting agony in his lungs, so painful he couldn’t breathe, and he needed it, needed  _ this,  _ was addicted even before the first taste.

With a shudder, John buried his face into a damp, flipped-up collar and sobbed.

“You left me,” he said, his throat sandpaper dry. “You fucking bastard, you left me.”

Arms tightened, gently rocking. A hand stroking down his spine. “I know,” soothed Sherlock. “I’m sorry.”

John scrabbled for a hold on his (what must’ve been) rapidly crumbling psyche. He needed to remember that it wasn’t actually him. Just a figment of his alcohol-addled brain, its desperate last-gasp attempt at reconciliation. “You bastard,” he said to the man who wasn’t Sherlock.

And even though it wasn’t Sherlock, he still opened his eyes. Still in denial, still not ready to let go (not after one year, not after a million.) It looked back, something bright and vulnerable in its eyes (blue—so blue—when was the last time he had seen blue?). 

“I miss you,” he said. He breathed out the words so quietly he wasn’t sure if he meant for Sherlock to hear them or not.

“It hurts,” he said. He took a shuddering inhale, felt his ribs rattle. “Sometimes I just want it to stop.”

“Don’t,” Sherlock said, tension filling the sharp crease of his shoulders. 

“Why?” John said before he could stop himself, feeling inexplicably bold, brazened. “S’not like it matters anymore.”

_ “No,”  _ Sherlock insisted. His voice was suddenly like steel, inexcusable and immovable. “Don’t talk like that. You don’t get to talk like that.”

“Doesn’t matter,” John whispered. “Not ‘nymore.”

“Yes,” Sherlock said harshly, “it does. John—John, dammit,  _ look at me.”  _ Hands, blood-hot (inexplicably), cupped his face. John shook his head, because if he opened his eyes, there would be nothing to keep the sting in his eyes from falling past his eyelids and onto his cheeks.

“John,” Sherlock pleaded. “Look at me. Please.”

And John couldn’t—he opened his eyes and looked. The tears slipped out and over, spilling onto his face.

Sherlock held onto his gaze with a blazing fury that John scrabbled against like a teetering foothold on a cliff. “I’m sorry,” Sherlock said, every word like a prayer. “I’m so sorry, John. I wish I could stay.”

“Then  _ stay,”  _ John wrenched out.

“I want to,” Sherlock hissed. “God, John, you have no idea how much I—” His hand clenched onto the fabric of John’s shirt at the small of his back. “I can’t, I can’t, I—” He broke off in a hasty exhale and pulled John in tighter, a jerky, detached desperation in his movement. John felt it in every heartbeat that pounded against them, flushed together like two puzzle pieces, jagged edges slotting into place.

For a while, John stayed silent, aftershocks like shivers scurrying up and down his spine.

“You’ll be gone in the morning,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

He felt Sherlock nod against the top of his head; sharp and jerky.

John took a deep breath. It wasn’t a question he wanted to ask, but one he needed to. “Will you be back?”

Pause. “I don’t know.”

John felt the barest hint of a smile pull at his lips. “I guessed as much.”

Sherlock’s thumbs etched circles into John’s hip, rubbing slowly and leaving behind a trail of warmth, tingling like a day-old tattoo.

John squirmed until they were wrapped around each other, strands of a double helix. He raised his head and bumped Sherlock’s forehead with his own. He breathed lightly, shallowly, feeling the thrum of another body against his, legs tangled and chest to chest—it was so fucking lifelike; it felt so fucking real.

It wasn’t, he told himself, again and again. He had to remember that it wasn’t real, or it would hurt too much in the morning. But he was selfish, was always selfish, which was why he leaned in ever closer, heart jackhammering against his ribs, and pressed his lips to the corner of Sherlock’s mouth. Barely touching, a phantom echo of a kiss. Sherlock inhaled sharply, but didn’t pull away.

John let himself linger for a few more seconds, memorizing the taste of Sherlock’s skin against his own  _ (selfish, _ he thought again) and then moved away before he wouldn’t be able to stop himself. He was already cracking; any more and he would shatter, and he didn’t want Sherlock to see him like that, tattered and ruined. He would deal with the aftermath by himself in the morning. He would.

John tucked himself into the crease between two pillows, his chin resting against Sherlock’s shoulder. His voice was a hushed murmur. “At least until I fall asleep, yeah?”

“Of course,” Sherlock whispered.

John felt a smile on his lips, devastatingly sad. Bitter like wormwood, sweetness studded like drops of sugar. “Alright. Goodnight, Sherlock.”

Warm lips at his temple like a flutter of butterfly wings. “Goodnight, John.”

That night, John dreamed of blue.

**Author's Note:**

> Whatever's actually going on with Sherlock in this story is up to you to decide. Thank you for reading, as always <3


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